Renato Seabra, the 21-year-old Portuguese model from Cantanhede, Portugal, is considering a psychiatric defense against the charges that he castrated, tortured, and killed his gay companion, Carlos Castro, in a New York hotel room, January 7.

His attorney, David Touger, believes that records from the psychiatric hospital will support a psychiatric defense. New York law allows for an insanity defense, in which a defendant can be acquitted — and sent to a mental hospital — if he or she can establish that he or she was so mentally ill when committing a crime that he or she didn’t know it was wrong.

According to the NY Daily News , Touger said that “Until we get those records, we are not making any decisions.”

Seabra, who has pleaded not guilty, is being held in a psychiatric hospital jail ward. Authorities say Seabra admitted slamming 65-year-old Carlos Castro’s head into a television, stabbing him with a corkscrew and choking and stomping on him. Castro’s body was found on the floor, bloodied, naked and castrated.